The Distributor Channel

High Velocity Radio Interview Posted using ShareThis

Radio isn't what it used to be. The following is an excerpt from a half hour interview I recently did for High Velocity Radio. Listen to it here. If you would like a full copy of the interview on a disk that you can listen to in your car, email us. It is absolutely free.

The distribution business has a beast looming in the back of the closet. It lurks in your inside sales group, thrives in your sales department and sucks the life’s blood from your bottom line. What is this savage? It’s the practice of cost-plus pricing. Every industry has one - for the electrical wholesaler it’s cost plus 20, or others it’s cost plus 10, 20, 25 or 30%. As an industry we have talked about cost-plus pricing for decades, yet it manages to survive. If your organization doesn’t have a clear cut process for pricing, it’s still hiding in the deep recesses of your company. And, it needs to be killed – before it kills you. Here’s how it works. A customer calls in and asks one of your employees for price and availability on a product. Somehow, someway they believe the ‘system price’ shown on the computer is too high, inaccurate, not supported or non-stock. They quickly look up your cost and then - the monster appears. Instead of measuring the cost of ordering, fr